Review: Pack of Lies by Sara Dailey and Staci Weber

Allison Wright is having a bad school year. All of a sudden the entire female student body hates her and the males seem to have the uncontrollable urge to grope her. After her third fight of the year, her mom sits her and her brother down for a long talk. Apparently, Allison and her brother Aiden are werewolves. Their mother fled her pack when she met and fell in love with their human father. Slated to marry the alpha, their mother simply disappeared with their father and has lived in obscurity ever since. When Allison begins to show signs of changing, Allison’s mother reveals her and her brothers origins and announces they are moving back to the pack. To Red Ridge, New Mexico.

Not everyone welcomed the Wright family to Red Ridge, New Mexico or into the pack. Cade, the alpha’s son, seems to be interested in Allison but his girlfriend, Kendall, wants her gone for good. When it is revealed that Cade and Allison are truly meant to be together; jealousy and betrayal go hand in hand and soon Allison finds herself fighting not only for Cade’s love, but also her life.

Pack Of Lies is the joint efforts of sister inlaws Sara Dailey and Staci Weber. A light paranormal YA romance with an interesting premise and promising storyline that failed to execute properly for me. The plotlines are formulaic and the character dialogue is frightfully simplistic. It’s very Youth Adult in some areas yet strives for a New Adult feel in others. To sum it all up-Gorgeous super nice girl moves to town, captures hottie boy attention. Hottie boy has a jealous catty girlfriend. Hottie boy is confused and waivers between gorgeous girl and jealous girlfriend. Hottie boy’s dad hates gorgeous girl. Gorgeous girl is threatened, Hottie boy finally grows a pair and saves her, and they ride, errr, run off into the sunset and everyone is happy.

I’m not trying to be catty here. What I stated above is the entire story. It reads as though a basic outline was drawn up and followed to the letter. The characters were not fleshed out well and I really didn’t feel like we got to know any of them. Cade comes across as a wimpy boy, not a future alpha. He lies and leads both Allison and his girlfriend on throughout the majority of the book. We are told why he does it but it still felt wrong. Allison’s brother Aiden is an annoyance in the background and seems to have a personality disorder. He is protective of her one minute then lets some guy whom he knows his sister hates feel her up then gets angry when she objects. Allison and Kendall both had a lot of potential that the authors explored to a certain extent but seemed to cut it short in order to move the story along. We never learn anything about the other teen wolves and there was a major elephant in the room between the alpha and Allison’s mom that was never addressed. Actually two elephants but maybe that is slated for book two. The villain also had a lot of potential as a major player yet when he is given the chance to shine, he comes across as pathetic and weak. And I never figured out how he thought he could even pull it any of it off.

The ending comes quickly. I never had a doubt how it would play out and I wasn’t disappointed in that aspect. Regardless of my issues, the story moves along fast clip and we are treated to three different POVs from Allison, Cade, and Kendell with helps understand what each are thinking. I honestly feel this series and these authors have a good story to tell, it just needs refining and a deeper exploration into the world building and character development.